Next stage: brew room is ready

The room awaits its equipment

After a lot of work, the garage has been refurbed to a standard acceptable for food and drink prep. We struck lucky in that we found two great catering workstations for sale on ebay, but we were sad to hear, when we picked them up, that they were from a small charity which was having to close. They helped ex-prisoners into kitchen work on release, but the funding ran out. What a shame.

The new brewing equipment is on order, and could take a while to arrive, but that hasn’t stopped us brewing in the garage – we’re just using our current size kit as it’s still officially homebrew until our registration is completed.

One immediate bonus of the garage being complete is that Flo has been able to reclaim her tiny bathroom where she used to colour her hair. For the last 18 months it’s been used as a fermenting room, so it was a welcome return to Manic Panic’s Atomic Blue last week!

The Alcohol & Warehouse Registration Scheme people has been brilliant; we had a phone chat with them last week as they have to ensure you’ve understood your responsibilities and undertake due diligence when selling beer. But they also understand we’re enthusiastic hobbyists so try not to make it too onerous.

Where are so far:

Hoping HMRC & AWRS licencing come through by end of next week

Final stages of branding and artwork

Website launch

Ordered 1B kit, but lots of it is out of stock so it may be a little wait.